Moon at Variety SF

Robert A Heinlein's "Double Star" (novel, politics): When an imposter became the ruler

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 14:37:00 +0000

This is a fast paced action story with a lot of election politics. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to because at some places the world view is too provincially Western; the thing that irritated me most was a small passage on the classification of world's languages - confidently told & totally bogus.

Story summary.

Here is a solar Empire spanning many worlds, dominated by humans though there are aliens on other worlds. It's a monarchy similar to British one - emperor is supreme but is a rubberstamp, & sits in a city on the moon. The parliament has the power & is elected; aliens can vote but must choose a human representative. Head of government is the "Supreme Minister", probably majority leader in Parliament.

Current ruling party has arranged the kidnapping of the leader of opposition at a time where he's absolutely required to be present at a Martian ceremony. So his underlings will recruit an actor, Lawrence Smith aka Lorenzo Smythe, to act as an imposter at the function. One thing will lead to another & new situations will keep coming up & the imposter will end up becoming the politician he's impersonating.

The story is, first & foremost, the character study of this actor, & evolution of his personality.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, Feb/Mar/Apr 1956.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Winner of Hugo Award 1957 in novel category.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Arthur K Barnes & Henry Kuttner's "The Energy Eaters" (novelette, monster, free): When a human city was overrun with electricity eaters!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:05:00 +0000

This is another "Hollywood on the Moon" story. Set mostly in the lunar city of Hollywood on the Moon, but no movie shooting here.

Image on the right is a picture of Henry Kuttner included with the original magazine publication of the story.

Story summary.

Gerry Carlyle, the interplanetary adventurer, is a headache for Nine Planet Films, Inc: whenever they release a movie featuring exotic life forms of other worlds, she goes there & brings back live animals to earth - so people prefer going to zoo rather than movie theater!

Anthony Quade of Nine Planet has an idea: to bribe her with an exotic alien animal no one has seen, in return for promise to not spoil the company's movie releases. To this end, he's captured some "Promethians", little furry-looking creatures from the "day side" of Mercury. Creatures that feed on electricity & radiation.

Before anyone can do anything, the cute little creatures overrun the city of Hollywood on the Moon, threatening the lives of everyone...

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1939.
Read online at UNZ.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

Henry Kuttner "Doom World" (novelette, adventure, free): A precursor to Jurassic Park!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 11:30:00 +0000

This is a sequel to author's "Hollywood on the Moon", & is completely set on moon.

There is too much similarity to Jurassic Park that was still many decades into future. Artificially engineered dangerous beasts at a place that is not their natural habitat. Nature takes over, safeguards break down, & mayhem results.

Story summary.

The story happens on the sets of a movie named "Doom World". Set is in the caverns under the city of "Hollywood on the Moon" on the far side of moon. Set is supposed to model the jungles of radioactive Pluto, with its many dangers!

Beasts on the set are biologically engineered, with radio-controlled electronic implants in their brains to control them. Story calls them robots, but they're not like any robots you've read about.

In the course of the story, nature takes over & the electronic implants serve little more than to irritate the animals. Hell breaks loose in the artificial jungle of the set, & the heroes & the film crew will have to face it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1938.
Read online at UNZ.
Note: I read it on an Android tablet with Firefox, & the document was a rather badly behaved one. Each page would allow only partial reading... until I move tablet to landscape orientation, & then back to portrait! On PC, it seems to display ok.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

Jerry Oltion's "In the Moment" (short story): Romance in the backdrop of a celestial event

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:04:00 +0000

A comet is about to hit moon & many amateur astronomers with their telescopes have gathered a few miles from the city to watch the event. Story is of the impact event observed by two teenagers in love.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January/February 2013.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Jerry Oltion.

Brian Trent's "Titans of Camp Four" (short story, moon travel, free)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:08:00 +0000

Air travel & moon travel aren't twentieth century inventions. They were already achieved by Romans!

Fact sheet.

First published: Cosmos, #47 (October 2012).
Download full text from publisher's site. [via QuasarDragon]
Rating: B.

Eric Frank Russell's "Dreadful Sanctuary" (novel, thriller): Man must not go to space cultists vs hero who says we'll go

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 14:10:00 +0000

This is one of those Fortean stories of Russell ("Sinister Barrier" is his best known of the type) - something above humanity is pulling our puppet strings.

Story summary.

Over a dozen human attempts to reach moon have all failed - rockets exploding when they're about a certain critical distance from moon. It's too much of a coincidence & there is no reason to suspect sabotage; rockets of several countries have met the same fate.

There is a man financially involved in the next rocket to go. And he's smelling conspiracy...

Notes.

Title refers to earth. There is an unreliable back story: Humanity independently evolved on 4 worlds - blacks on Mercury, browns on Venus, yellows on earth, & whites on Mars (skin color depends on their distance from sun). All civilizations except earth reach maturity a long long time ago, & banished war. But they still had crazies who were not cured of need to war. They were herded on 3 worlds, & transported to earth to rid the mother worlds of them - back when earthmen were really primitive. So earth is a prison planet & all except those of yellow skin are descended from the crazies dumped here!

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June/July/August 1948.
Rating: B.
Among the stories edited by John Campbell for Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Eric Frank Russell (annotated list).

Judith Merril's "Project Nursemaid" (novella): Government's difficulties enrolling unwanted babies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:01:00 +0000

I cannot point to any clear flaws in the story, but I kept putting it down frequently. Took me over a dozen sittings to finish it.

Story summary.

Set up is: For space exploration, babies raised in special low gravity environments are necessary, low-gravity environments not being very conducive for ordinary earth-raised adults.

So government has a program where it creates orphans to raise (on moon)! Because of moral issues involved, the program is a secret one.

So a certain military camp in the US has certain targets: so many babies to deliver (means recruiting young mothers of unwanted pregnancies), & so many "foster parents" to deliver (older women to nurse the babies).

Story is from the point of view of Colonel Edgerly whose job it is recruit both babies & their nursemaids.

Collected in.

Groff Conklin (ed)'s "Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels".

Fact sheet.

First published: F&SF, October 1955.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Judith Merril.

Jack Williamson's "Terraforming Terra" (novelette, post-apocalypse): Gods "blaspheming" themselves!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:00:00 +0000

A rock bigger than the dinosaur killer hit earth, destroying most life, including all of humanity, & poisoned the atmosphere.

A few survivalist, however, had prepared for precisely this eventually. They could escape to moon, & they have a plan to make earth inhabitable again & reestablish human civilization.

Plan will be executed over geological time - using frozen human cells to clone 5 men & women, advanced robots, seeds, etc. Every few hundred thousand years, robots remake clones of 5 survivors, teach them special skills, & send them off to earth to do the next step. Trips rarely go as planned, because natural evolution has been happening on earth too - there were animals, insects & bacteria in specific niches that survived the cataclysm.

Eventually, such a group of 5 is stranded on earth. No fuel to go back to moon, under attack by a vast hoard of hungry insects.

When the next group of 5 clones arrives from moon 1000 years later, they're astonished with the progress. A flourishing human city, where the 5 previous clones are gods. Only the real new arrivals get an unexpected treatment...

Fact sheet.

First published: Science Fiction Age, November 1998.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Jack Williamson.

Raymond Z Gallun's "Comet's Burial" (short story, free): Terraforming moon!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:00:00 +0000

This is old fashioned science fiction adventure; drop any pretense of realism, & go have fun. We also see some ancient Martian relics on moon, ride through Sol aboard a Martian ship, & eat long-preserved Martian canned meat that's probably of earth's dinosaurs!

Jess Brinker is convinced real underground cities can be built on moon if only some way were found to cut through its 200 km thick crust to reach the resources inside. So he & his apprentice Arne Copeland will move Brulow's Comet to smash into far side of moon - without informing anyone else on moon or earth!

Of course, there will be happy ending.

Fact sheet.

First published: Science Fiction Stories, #1 (1953).
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Raymond Z Gallun.

Murray Leinster's "Operation: Outer Space" (novel, space opera, free): Party explores 3 earth-like worlds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:36:00 +0000

It's not a bad read. But not among the better stories of author, either. Leave logic somewhere, & enjoy the roller-coaster with a mad scientist who can put together the first-ever FTL ship in a few weeks, a super-businessman, & some others in exploring 3 earth-like worlds in far-away star systems: a glacial world, a world with large cattle herds ready to be hunted, & a world that has never known life.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1954.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

John Gilbey's "Corrective action" (flash fiction, fatal software bug, free)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:30:00 +0000

Untested upgrade of software controlling an airlock at some sort of private facility on moon killed a government safety inspector. Administration of the facility has been covering up the incident by doctoring records.

Another safety inspector catches the administration at its act, but gets only a smirk from facility's chief; what the hell can inspector do, apart from imposing a minor fine? What the chief doesn't know is that dead inspector was the "partner" of the visitor, & visitor is not about to let the facility get away with it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, #464 (22 April 2010).
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.

Clyde Brown's "First Man" (short story, humor, free): Record of the first manned trip to moon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 19:32:00 +0000

Harold Ferguson, a tinkerer who has built a spaceship to take him to moon, accidentally ended up with his neighbor Orville Close too in the ship during takeoff! A ship fashioned from junk that took off from Harold's backyard!

The two had a successful trip to moon without anyone in the world knowing about it! Even after their return, no one believes they've been to moon - since they landed in Siberia, & had to leave the ship there when finding passage home.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, April 1958.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.

Joe Haldeman's "More Than the Sum of His Parts" (short story, free): A man's transformation into a cyborg, then monster

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

This story is ... sort of ... a very abrupt attachment of John Varley's "Bagatelle" (download) to the middle of C L Moore's "No Woman Born".

A serious accident victim is saved by transforming him into a cyborg. He begins to like the new body parts. Then he starts enjoying his new found power too much, & quickly becomes a monster. Monster is easily disposed off, of course, by a techno-gimmick.

Caution: Bits of the story have explicit sex scenes, & describe male anatomy in some detail.

Fact sheet.

First published: Playboy, May 1985.
Download full text from Lightspeed.
Rating: B.

Robert H Wilson's "Out Around Rigel" (novelette, free): An adventure with relativity implications

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:58:00 +0000

It's not a bad read, but pick it up only on a day when you aren't in a mood to use your head.

Story summary.

There are actually multiple stories here, but woven into a single one:

When man becomes capable of flying to another world, where does he go out first? You might think moon would be a logical choice. But Lunarians don't think like us! Here two Lunarian friends, one of them a super-inventor, have their maiden space fight's target as the Rigel system some 500 lightyears away!
A love triangle - two men & a woman. Both men love the woman; she loves only one of them. One of the men thinks the issue should be settled with a duel. Where would the two go out to duel? A somewhat open place nearby? Wrong. Geniuses don't think like normal people!!
Third main thread is about the implications of traveling at relativistic speeds - implications from people's point of view.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, December 1931.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg. [via Butch Malahide @rasfw]
Rating: B.

Real science: Moon map (1829)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Map in multiple resolutions at Boing Boing.

Stanley Mullen's "Master of the Moondog" (novelette, adventure, free): Treasure hunt on moon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:00:00 +0000

"Moondog" of title is hero's pet - a creature found on the moons of Saturn, one who can give out electric shocks or even damage electrical equipment - hence useful as a weapon.

Tod Denver, hero, is near witness to a murder - murder of a prospector on moon who'd found a mine once worked by Martians & presumably still with enough treasures. That's how he gets the map of the treasure mine. Cops he reports murder to are in murderer's pay; so the bad guys are now after hero too!

Of course, all ends well - & hero is richer with a girlfriend too!

Fact sheet.

First published: Planet Stories, July 1952.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Fiction set on moon.

William Tenn's "Project Hush" (short story, satire): On military secrecy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:17:00 +0000

"Project Hush" is a top-secret project of US government - to build some sort of anti-nuclear-weapons system. It involves being the first to go to moon, & to set up some sort of military base there. And doing so in complete secrecy.

All goes well with the landing. A little scouting around their base's ("dome") location reveals yet another, already existing, dome! A scout is sent to find out more, & finds something astonishing...

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, February 1954.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of William Tenn, from 1950s.

Paul Ernst's "The World Behind the Moon" (short story, adventure, free): Did you know earth has a second, invisible, moon too?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:01:00 +0000

Yes - it's called Zeud. It's about the size of moon, & moves behind moon, always staying invisible from earth! And its teeming with life - monsters, sentient tribals, jungle, ...

Super-inventor Professor Dorn Wichter & a young man named Joyce go on adventure here, traveling in professor's "water-motor" driven rocket, after they notice Zeud during their initial adventure on the far side of the moon.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1931.
Download full text as part of the magazine it originally appeared in from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by Harry Bates.
Related: Fiction from 1930s.

Real science: Large quantities of water ice on moon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:56:00 +0000

This post is based on a front page story in Bombay "Late City" edition of The Indian Express newspaper today, quoting multiple ISRO & NASA sources.

"New analysis of scientific data from" a NASA instrument called "Mini-SAR" "that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft" "found more than 40 small craters (2-15 km in diameter) with sub-surface water ice located at their base. The interior of these craters is in permanent sun shadow".

These craters are all located "in the lunar north pole". "there could be more than 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters."

While previous investigations by ISRO & NASA have detected water on moon, "this is the first time that evidence has emerged of the presence of large quantities of lunar water."

Anthony Boucher's "One-way Trip" (novelette, slow glass, free)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:00:00 +0000

This is a very involved story - best read as a short novel, though only of novelette length.

At a gross level, it's simple enough: a mad man comes in possession of a novel weapon, & dreams of becoming a world dictator. Hero, with help, will foil his plans. But there are many characters, threads, backgrounds, technology, ...

Title is related to social background of story. This is a world that has taken the "code of Devarupa", a man modeled after Mahatma Gandhi, to heart. Killing is banned, even by state. So the punishment for extreme crimes is "one-way trip": you're put in a rocket with enough provisions for your "calculated" life & blasted out to space with variable unspecified velocity - rocket might go in orbit around earth, moon, or somewhere else, but you're never going to talk to anyone else.

"Lovestonite".

A clay found in Australia, discovered some 20 years ago. Also, the glass made from this clay. This glass has a curious property - light passes through it at about a quarter of its vacuum speed.

No one knew what to do with it, till recently. Emigdio "Mig" Valentinez, a very famous painter/tinkerer - a sort of Leonardo da Vinci, has taken up a project to paint himself. He finds mirrors unsatisfactory, & apparently still photography wasn't available.

Valentinez discovers that speed of light is not fixed in Lovestonite, but can be varied - from near 0 to near its normal (vacuum?) speed - by subjecting it to carefully controlled electromagnetic field. So he builds the gadget - combination camera & display device.

You stare at the gadget for a while while speed is set to near zero. You press a button so the light quickly goes to other side & again slows down. So you have your staring image coming out from other side for a while!

A crook finds his secret, & thinks up another use: as a weapon. Let a lot of sunlight enter it at slow speed; so glass acts as a battery, storing solar energy. Then release it at will at a specific target!

At the end of the story, hero will propose yet another use for it: as enabler for colonization of Mars because a thin sheet can store enough energy to burn a town! Made me wonder what the melting point of this glass be!

Notes.

A quote from story: "the practical vigor & solemnity of the western religion with the sublime mysticism of the orient."

I've lived all my life in India, & I haven't seen much "sublime mysticism". I wonder where the myth of mystic East originated. Or may be India is not counted in the East?
Story features a "World State", centered in US (of course). And there is a "world-wide spread of Basic English".

May be the author could have suggested a solution to India's babel of languages, & saved us many a protest & riots! Going by India's experience, I have serious doubts on the feasibility of any single "world language".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, August 1943.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding issue where it originally appeared.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Works of Anthony Boucher; fiction from 1940s; Tuesday Classics.

Loonies illustrated

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:48:00 +0000

This rasfw thread is listing places where illustrations of the natives of our moon, as they appear in science fiction, are to be found.

Robert Heinlein's "Space Jockey" (short story, hard sf, free): Nitty-gritty of regular earth-to-moon travel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:00:00 +0000

This story is not for everyone, but very good read for folks with the right aptitude: lot of technical details of what the life of a pilot on a 3-leg earth-to-moon run would be, if lifting weight off earth were sufficiently cheap.

Fact sheet.

First published: The Saturday Evening Post, 26 April 1947.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein; fiction from 1940s.

Real science: Physical differences between earth dust & that of moon & Mars

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Link. [via Boing Boing]

'Dust is one of the biggest obstacles for long-term lunar and Martian space colonies. On the moon, there’s no atmosphere and no water, so the dust particles don’t get moved around, worn down and rounded like they do on Earth.

Consequently, dust kicked up by rovers and astronauts is “very abrasive and sharp, like freshly broken glass”...

Electrostatic charging from solar winds and UV radiation on the moon makes this sharp dust cling to everything, including astronaut suits where it can work its way through the glove air locks. It also sticks to the solar panels that power rovers and other instruments.

On Mars, which has a thin atmosphere, dust devils scour the surface and keep the soil from being as sharp, but it’s still got plenty of static cling.'

Arthur Clarke's "Sunjammer" aka "The Wind from the Sun" (novelette, racing): Solar sail power interstellar vehicle!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0000

About a month ago, there was a news item in The New York Times [via Brenda Clough] about a series of forthcoming experiments in solar sail powered vehicles. This story is one of the best pieces of hard sf from Clarke, & among the most exotic racing stories by anyone.

Note: Idea of a solar sail is to use the "pressure" of sunlight - not like solar energy but like particles of light that aren't quite particles though they have momentum - as the motive power. No other energy source is necessary, except for steering.

Story summary.

Seven solar sail powered vehicles of different designs from "four inhabited worlds" will compete in the race from earth to moon. Eventually, of course, it will be fight between US & Russian vehicles!

Beginning point is "twenty-two thousand miles above the [earth's] equator" where the vehicles are anchored to normal ships in a certain formation. At T0, the anchor lines are cut, & the race is on.

At moon, other vehicles will pick up the crew capsules. "the winner will be the one that first drifted past the Moon."

Story is mostly told from the point of view of US participant - John Merton, "Chief Designer of Cosmodyne Corporation", riding the sail ship Diana. He's the only one flying solo; everyone else has a crew of two. He thinks the reduced mass will work in his favor.

They will make two rounds around earth, picking speed during the "powered half of the orbit", before reaching escape velocity. We go through the maneuvers needed when vehicles

pass through earth's shadow ("The shroud lines were slackening, & must be wound in lest they become entangled.")
when moving the unpowered half of orbit (towards Sun) (need to sail "edge-on" to sun, or you're thrown back).
when transitioning to powered part of orbit from unpowered.

We also see a competitive practice where one vehicle tries to cast shadow on another to cut its supply of sunlight, & how the victim escapes.

Participants keep falling off the race till only US & Russia are left: two to collision when passing through earth's shadow, another who could not turn the sail edge-on during unpowered half, another who could not transition from unpowered to powered half, & another where the lines rigging crew capsule to sail gave way.

Neck-to-neck half way to moon a day after reaching escape velocity, the last two participants will also have to abandon their vehicles because of a solar flare (their tiny capsules are unshielded). But Merton had rigged his machine to sail unaided too - so when he jumps, the vehicle is on its way to moon & beyond - eventually attaining solar escape velocity.

Quotes.

Diana: "fifty million square feet of sail, linked to his capsule by almost a hundred miles of rigging... Yet it was little more substantial than a soap bubble; that two square miles of aluminised plastic was only a few millionths of an inch thick."
How much is the pressure of sunlight on Earth? "Hold your hands out to the sun... Over the area of your hands, it comes to only about a millionth of an ounce.

But out in space, even a pressure as small as that can be important, for it's acting all the time, hour after hour, day after day. Unlike rocket fuel, it's free & unlimited."
Solar sail: "A square mile weighs only a ton, & can collect five pounds of radiation pressure. So it will start moving - & we can let it tow us along, if we attach rigging to it.

Of course, it's acceleration would be tiny - about a thousandth of a g. That doesn't seem much, but let's see what it means.

It means that in the first second, we'll move about a fifth of an inch. I suppose a healthy snail could do better. But after a minute, we've covered sixty feet, & will be doing just over a mile an hour. That's not bad, for something driven by pure sunlight! After an hour, we're forty miles from our starting point, & will be moving at eighty miles an hour... You'll be surprised when I tell you what our one-thousandth-of-a-g sailboat will be doing at the end of a day's run: almost two thousand miles an hour! If it starts from orbit - as it has to, of course - it can reach escape velocity in a couple of days. And all without burning a single drop of fuel!"
On inertia: "another rule that was hard to learn: the very moment you had started something happening in space, it was already time to think about stopping it."
Food "crumbs were a greater danger to space vehicles than meteorites; they could drift into the most unlikely places, causing short circuits, blocking vital jets, & getting into instruments that were supposed to be hermetically sealed."
"Those two square miles [of sail] produce a maximum pull of just ten pounds. I can exert more force by my little finger."
"It was hard to keep a good watch on that 60 million square feet of dim plastic out there in the darkness, illuminated only by his narrow spotlight & the rays of the still distant Moon."
By the time of second lap around earth, while "the two square miles of plastic sheet must have been riddled by hundreds of micrometeorites, the pinhead-sized punctures had produced no falling off of thrust."
Diana, after jettisoning: "Two days from now, she would flash past the Moon; but the Moon, like the Earth, could never catch her. Without his mass to slow her down, she would gain two thousand miles an hour in every day of sailing. In a month, she would be traveling faster than any ship that man had ever built.

As the Sun's rays weakened with distance, so her acceleration would fall. But even at the orbit of Mars, should would be gaining a thousand miles an hour in a day. Long before than, she would be moving too swiftly for the Sun itself to hold her. Faster than a comet had ever streaked in from the stars, she would be heading out into the abyss."

Collected in.

"The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke".
Arthur Clarke's "The Wind from the Sun" (coll).
Arthur Clarke's "The Sentinel" (coll).

Fact sheet.

First published: Boy's Life, March 1964 as "Sunjammer".
From author's note, introducing this story in Collected Stories: "The story's original title was 'Sunjammer' but as Poul Anderson had the same idea almost simultaneously, I was obliged to make a quick change of name."
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Arthur Clarke (only his short fiction/novels).

Real science: NASA finds water ice on moon's south pole

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Data from last month's LCROSS probe has confirmed what was till now a suspicion.

[via SF Signal]

Moon at Variety SF

Robert A Heinlein's "Double Star" (novel, politics): When an imposter became the ruler

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Arthur K Barnes & Henry Kuttner's "The Energy Eaters" (novelette, monster, free): When a human city was overrun with electricity eaters!

Story summary.

See also.

Fact sheet.

Henry Kuttner "Doom World" (novelette, adventure, free): A precursor to Jurassic Park!

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Jerry Oltion's "In the Moment" (short story): Romance in the backdrop of a celestial event

Fact sheet.

Brian Trent's "Titans of Camp Four" (short story, moon travel, free)

Fact sheet.

Eric Frank Russell's "Dreadful Sanctuary" (novel, thriller): Man must not go to space cultists vs hero who says we'll go

Story summary.

Notes.

Fact sheet.

Judith Merril's "Project Nursemaid" (novella): Government's difficulties enrolling unwanted babies

Story summary.

Collected in.

Fact sheet.

Jack Williamson's "Terraforming Terra" (novelette, post-apocalypse): Gods "blaspheming" themselves!

See also.

Fact sheet.

Raymond Z Gallun's "Comet's Burial" (short story, free): Terraforming moon!

Fact sheet.

Murray Leinster's "Operation: Outer Space" (novel, space opera, free): Party explores 3 earth-like worlds

Fact sheet.

John Gilbey's "Corrective action" (flash fiction, fatal software bug, free)

Fact sheet.

Clyde Brown's "First Man" (short story, humor, free): Record of the first manned trip to moon

Fact sheet.

Joe Haldeman's "More Than the Sum of His Parts" (short story, free): A man's transformation into a cyborg, then monster

Fact sheet.

Robert H Wilson's "Out Around Rigel" (novelette, free): An adventure with relativity implications

Story summary.

See also.

Fact sheet.

Real science: Moon map (1829)

Stanley Mullen's "Master of the Moondog" (novelette, adventure, free): Treasure hunt on moon

Fact sheet.

William Tenn's "Project Hush" (short story, satire): On military secrecy

Fact sheet.

Paul Ernst's "The World Behind the Moon" (short story, adventure, free): Did you know earth has a second, invisible, moon too?

Fact sheet.

Real science: Large quantities of water ice on moon

Anthony Boucher's "One-way Trip" (novelette, slow glass, free)

"Lovestonite".

Notes.

See also.

Fact sheet.

Loonies illustrated

Robert Heinlein's "Space Jockey" (short story, hard sf, free): Nitty-gritty of regular earth-to-moon travel

Fact sheet.

Real science: Physical differences between earth dust & that of moon & Mars

See also.

Arthur Clarke's "Sunjammer" aka "The Wind from the Sun" (novelette, racing): Solar sail power interstellar vehicle!

Story summary.

Quotes.

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Real science: NASA finds water ice on moon's south pole